This invention relates to mobile firefighting equipment such as a fire truck equipped to fight fires in tall buildings; and more particularly, to a retrofitted or original equipment (OE) fire truck employing the equipment to breach walls on both the outside or the inside of a building. When the walls are breached, water or a fire retardant gas or foam is sprayed through in-line and/or peripheral nozzles onto a fire to extinguish it.
Fighting fires in tall buildings is extremely difficult. Depending on the location of the fire (i.e., on a streetside of the building where the fire is accessible, or away from a streetside where it is not), positioning fire fighting equipment close enough to the location of the fire so to be effective in fighting it can be very difficult, and sometimes impossible. Fire trucks are available whose hoses are extendible to great heights so water or a fire retardant material can be directed at a fire to either control or extinguish it. However, the ability to extend a hose to an appropriate height does not mean the water will reach the fire. This is because many times the exterior of the building must first be breached. If a window has been blown or knocked out, or if a side of the building has partially collapsed, water can be directed at the fire through the opening. But if this hasn't happened, then the hose must be trained on a window in the hope that water pressure will knock out the window and provide the necessary access to the fire.
Further, even when it is possible to direct water into a building at a great height, this does not mean the water will reach the fire. If the fire is located away from the opening into which water is directed, the water may not reach the fire and will no therefore be very effective in putting out the fire. Rather, any intervening walls or partitions between the opening into which water is sprayed and the fire must first be breached so the water can reach and extinguish the fire. Otherwise, the best that be hoped for is that the water directed at that floor will keep the fire from spreading. Overcoming these obstacles has heretofore been difficult to do, if at all, unless firefighters can reach the floor and breach the walls and partitions with pickaxes, spiked poles, or other equipment.
Besides these problems, another difficulty is that fire trucks, especially those used in metropolitan areas, are currently not designed for off-road use. That is, they generally must remain on a street and cannot readily be driven close to a building which is setback from the street any appreciable distance and erected on a hill, for example. Accordingly where the building is not adjacent a street, or there is an elevation change between street level and the building, it becomes significantly more difficult to fight a fire in the building.
The present invention addresses these problems.